


ego sum rex gloriae

by becausemagnets



Category: Baseball RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombies, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-08
Updated: 2012-04-08
Packaged: 2017-11-03 06:17:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/378237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/becausemagnets/pseuds/becausemagnets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything is the zombie apocalypse and everything hurts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ego sum rex gloriae

**Author's Note:**

> This has less to do with zombies than I would like. The title loosely translates to “I am a king of renown” in Latin. The zombie world is sort of a riff on Justin Cronin's _The Passage_ , but not really. As I said, less to do with zombies, more to do with unmitigated angst. Written for littlestclouds for the third round of bats_and_balls on LJ.

The best thing about the end of the world was that it felt like Morris and Haren were the only people left in the world. Maybe they were. 

The worst thing about the end of the end of the world was that it felt like Morris and Haren were the only people left in the world. Maybe they were.

– 

“You should stay away from river cities.” Haren had just nodded, metal cold against his fingers as he stared out at the Mississippi. There was one working street lamp on the Riverfront. He never should have gone to it. They went to light like moths, but he was tired all the way down to his bone marrow and he _thought_ —in the slimmest, narrowest part of his mind—that someone might find him. He had been right. 

Morris had to have been around before it happened—or at least around longer than Haren's five years. No one said “cities” anymore.

–

Morris didn't trust him, which was fine. He had a pistol in the back pocket of his jeans and he wore a coat better suited for nuclear winter than—than whatever had happened. But it was to carry the shotgun strapped across his chest in a harness. He drank a lot. Busted shopfront windows that weren't already broken and raided liquor cabinets. He gave Haren his fair share, but Morris seemed to practically absorb it, fueled only by alcohol and some survival instinct that Haren simply didn't possess. 

Haren felt like he'd been thrown to the wolves; Morris had probably killed them all. 

He was thin, tall, built more for running than sticking around, which may eventually be a distinct advantage. His hair was greying a little and there were lines around his eyes. Not laugh lines or smile lines. He probably got them from staring straight into the sun. He didn't speak much, but he let Haren talk as much as he wanted, rare. Most people, especially people like Morris who were burnt around the edges and had more blood on their hands, they didn't have time for people like Haren who made it by on the skin of his teeth, sheer luck and a careful force of will. 

Haren didn't learn much about Morris. He learned a lot _from_ Morris. How to shoot a gun. Morris gave him two pistols, strapped them across his back himself. Where to find good drinking water, how far you had to dig into the ground. What was edible outside of the shelters. Morris made it seem like they wouldn't be together much longer. Haren had other ideas. 

–

“This used to be the county. Suburbs, you know.” Morris spread his palms out, face up. Haren didn't know. He didn't know what a suburb ever was—they were all gone by the time he was born. There were boards over most of the houses. Some had spray painted messages over them. Haren couldn't read them.“Can't be too careful around here, either. They wait until it's dark, creep out of basements and wine cellars and shit.” 

Haren found a pack of cigarettes on a kitchen counter and they sat on a stained sofa and smoked the entire pack between them. Morris talked more than he ever had and they'd been together for nearly eight days. A record for Haren. No one stuck around anymore. Haren couldn't really blame them—he'd never been able to stay in one place either. 

“We should go back to the city—to the stadium. People used to be there, but I think they're all... Well, I don't remember what happened, it was a few years ago, probably. I don't know, time doesn't really mean much anymore, y'know?” Haren nodded, probably too vigorously, his head rushing a little. Maybe it was the nicotine. It had been awhile. “I'm sure they're all gone by now, too. Food's run out. It'll be a nice place to hole up. A little hard to defend without the numbers, but I'm running out of ideas. It's pretty... bleak. Out here.” 

Haren readily agreed. To be entirely honest, he wasn't sure what other choice he had. Do what Morris said or go on living so pointlessly, subsisting despite himself, that he might as well be dead. And with so many people dead and dying around him every single day, the smell of rot so thick, he couldn't remember smelling anything else, it seemed perfectly cruel not to do what Morris said. 

– 

The stadium was the closest thing to a castle he'd ever seen, a fortress. There were the telltale signs that it had been used as a makeshift fallout shelter, but the barbed wire fences were all torn down by now. All of the corpses were just skeletons, picked clean. It was better not to think about how they got that way. 

Morris seemed older. 

They holed up in a corner where there were still a few seats. Morris had killed a deer a few days ago and he built a fire on the ground, all packed dirt. “There used to be grass here, you know.” Haren didn't know. He didn't even know what stadiums were for before all of this happened. He remembered, vaguely, about some kid who ended up getting shot in the head before he could become one of them, telling him that people used to live in the stadiums like little colonies, but somehow he didn't think that's what Morris was talking about. “Do you know anything?” Haren doubted it. “Maybe it's better that way.” Haren didn't agree.

Haren told Morris everything about himself. He had two parents at some point, but he lost them. They'd lived in a colony a lot of miles from here. There'd been an ocean. Haren hadn't seen an ocean since then. It had already started when he was young. Well, it hadn't started, but it had gotten out. And by the time it had started, he was alone. He spent a lot of time alone. 

Morris told him a little bit. He told him that he was young when it got out, but he was around twelve when it started. He told him he had seen the ocean, too. He told him that he had lived in this stadium for nearly ten years. He told him that he had never been alone. 

Haren didn't believe him. Morris sounded like someone who had been alone. 

–

Haren thought maybe he loved Morris. He also thought that Morris knew this, but didn't particularly care. Maybe that was how it worked—Haren didn't know, Haren had never known anyone long enough to know what it felt like to be in love or how it worked or what it was, really and truly, but he felt like spending a few weeks together meant that he could be. In love. 

So Haren told him. He was sewing a patch of deer skin onto Morris's leather jacket. Or trying to. He was mostly pricking himself with the needle and smearing blood across the leather, watching it soak up. Morris told him he didn't. Love him. Morris told him what he felt was gratitude. Morris told him what he felt was companionship. Morris told him what he felt was not being lonely. Haren asked him what love felt like then. 

Morris didn't answer him. 

– 

Morris told him that he had been in love once, a long time ago. He told Haren not to ask about it. 

So Haren asked him about before. What Morris knew about what happened. 

There had been a virus. Test subjects. They had escaped. Morris had watched it on the news. When there had been televisions. Haren didn't know what televisions were. He didn't ask. But the test subjects couldn't die, not like the ones now. They were still out there somewhere, invincible. But they started it. Something in the blood. A mutation of the original virus. That's why there were all of the stories, about not letting them bite you or bleed on you. Morris didn't think it really mattered—he said they'd all end up like one of them some day. He said they were probably sitting there, breathing them in, and dying slowly every minute. 

Haren said it wasn't the dying. It would be fine to die. It was the waking up that was all wrong. 

Morris didn't say anything, but he clapped Haren on the back, hard. 

–

Haren shot one in the tunnels under the stadium. The sound echoed around and made him temporarily deaf, but he'd completely destroyed its head. It had been young, maybe a child. It had been starved, but continued to persist despite itself. 

Haren had never killed one before. He threw up. 

He didn't tell Morris about it. 

– 

Morris had killed a lot of them. 

He told Haren about it. The virus wasn't just in the blood. It could be passed on anyway at all. They floated in the water sometimes, harmless until they smelled breathers, and if you drank the water, you could get it. So everyone in the stadium boiled water. Except the one time they didn't. 

Morris had killed them all, eventually. Had to. 

He told Haren that he would probably have to kill him someday, too. 

Haren said he couldn't do that. 

Haren was lying. 

Haren wouldn't. 

– 

Haren knew that he loved Morris, the same way he knew how to survive without ever being told. He sensed that Morris knew this, too. There was a subtle shift, a silence that grew arms and leg between them. Haren didn't tell him again, but it was more to save himself. He had figured out that Morris wouldn't love him back. Not couldn't. That was one of those extraneous limbs, _wouldn't_. 

“It's dangerous, you know.” Those were Morris's thoughts on love. Actually, surprisingly, Haren did know. 

– 

Haren killed another one when they were getting water straight from the river. 

It didn't have any legs, dragging its torso around with its arms. Its eyes were milky white and rolling around in their sockets. He kicked its jaw out of its skull and then shot it in the head. Morris didn't say anything. Haren didn't throw up. 

– 

“I think maybe it's a good idea if you stayed here and I went somewhere else.” Haren didn't acknowledge that he heard anything, but they were laying about two inches from each other and nothing made a sound anymore, so he didn't have to. “I think that this was all a very bad idea, you know.” 

“No.” Haren had never disagreed with Morris before. It tasted like acid in the back of his throat, worse than the rot. “No, I think that you leaving is a very idea. I think I'd die if you left—here.” He'd almost said _me_ , which was the truth, but it was better left unsaid. 

“I think you'd die anyway. I think we'll both die anyway.” 

“But would you rather die alone?” The question is really _but would you rather die without me_. 

Morris doesn't answer it like that, though. “Guess not.” 

– 

Morris had hunted them. Haren wouldn't have believed anyone else, but Morris had always treated Haren more like his confessor than his friend, so he knew it was true. Morris had gone out and killed as many as he could. Tore their heads off with his bare hands. Shot them until he ran out of bullets and guns and thought he'd never find anymore. Smashed them in with baseball bats. 

He had been trying to kill himself. 

That's when he found Haren under a street light. He had suspected that there were still breathers out there, somewhere, but he never expected to find anyone else, not after what happened at the stadium. He felt like he never deserved to find anyone else after what he'd done. 

He didn't tell Haren this because he thought it put him at any risk, though it did. If the virus spread the way Morris thought it spread, he could die at any minute. Die and wake up. He told Haren this because he would have said it, anyway. 

– 

Haren killed a breather. It had been an accident. 

He didn't throw up. He didn't feel a thing. 

–

He asked Morris about when he'd been in love. It was stupid, but he asked, anyway. 

Morris didn't talk to him for a few days. And then Morris said, “He was the one that didn't boil the water.” 

That was basically everything that Haren needed to know and it made him painfully aware that he could still feel, so he didn't want Morris to say anything else, but that was also stupid. “He was the best man I've ever met. I would have died a thousand times over without him. Everyone who met him would have. He was just so _calm_. Like he knew that this was temporary and that we'd make it out somehow. And he almost made me believe we could, too. Just the two of us.” Haren wanted him to stop, but he couldn't speak. He shut his eyes. “I should have gone with him, that night. I didn't. He was one of them by morning. I killed him. I shot him over fifty times. He was the first one, you know.” Haren was crying. Morris wasn't. “He didn't love me either.” 

“I'm sorry.” Haren wasn't sure what he was sorry for. Asking, listening, acknowledging, loving, existing. The fact that Morris had to say _either_. He didn't love me _either_. 

“Me too.” And Morris kissed him. 

– 

It probably only happened because they were the only two people left in the world, but that really didn't matter after it was all said and done. Haren had this idea, though there was no one left to confirm it, if there ever had been, that was how love was sometimes. That there were two incredibly lonely people who walked broken heart first and they collided into each other and then the rest of the world didn't exist for them as it had before or since. It didn't really matter that Morris didn't love him. Maybe it was better that way. Because it always going to end up like this and they both knew it. Probably the second their eyes met under the single streetlight. 

Haren had always been a leech, sticking on and sucking all the valuable resources out of anyone he met, surviving off of someone else's sustenance, but he'd never known anything better. He'd been biding his time, waiting for something he wasn't sure ever existed. Something that had been destroyed a long time ago. He thought maybe he found it, but maybe not. All that mattered, in the end, was that he wasn't a leech anymore. 

It wasn't that he couldn't. And it even turned out that it wasn't that he wouldn't. He could. He would. He did. 

Morris did it, on purpose probably. It bit him. He killed it, but it bit him, straight through the leather of his jacket. Haren felt his heart fall through the ground, but Morris didn't seem fazed. He shrugged. Haren shot him right then. Just ten times. He expected some kind of shock, something, but Morris's eyes were as dead as everything else and that felt right. 

There probably were other breathers out there somewhere. But he never expected to find anyone else, not after what happened on the Riverfront. He didn't feel like he deserved to find anyone else after what he'd done.


End file.
